The Lovely Reckless Book Review

The Lovely Reckless was a book that I constantly saw on my instagram feed. I never read Beautiful Creatures, but because of how popular The Lovely Reckless seemed to be, I decided to give it a try. If you saw my rating on Goodreads, then you probably have a good idea of what I thought about it. But why you ask? Let me tell you….

Plot and Writing Style:

The plot was predictable. As Frankie made decisions and things happened nothing surprised me. At all. No spoilers, but so predictable! So many cliches! It was like Kami Garcia watched a bunch of old movies and then changed the wording to fit in a racing street scene. I don’t know how Beautiful Creatures was written, but The Lovely Reckless wasn’t anything great. It wasn’t too bad, just nothing fantastic.

Characters:

Frankie-

Frankie was a whiny main character. Watching her boyfriend die in front of her gave her PTSD which does make sense. But she is ridiculous and over the top all the time. She has three or four different personalities and I couldn’t quite figure out who she really was. Around her parents she’s 100% bitch. She just uses Lex as a chauffeur for most of the book. But around Marco she’s sweet and pliant, and then bold and defiant. Then around the kids she helps at the after school club, she’s kind, relatable, and knows just what to say. She was just irritating and inconsistent…

Marco-

Marco was such a flat character. Bad boy doing bad things for the right reasons. But nothing too bad, he never hurt anyone. He’s devoted to taking care of his sister but he’s blinded by it! He makes ridiculously stupid decisions! The decision he makes at the end, he should’ve made earlier. He’s hot and has tattoo’s. That’s why Frankie likes him. Ugh, it’s just so infuriating.

Cruz-

Cruz was my favorite character! She’s sassy, but sweet. I would’ve prefered a story written about her honestly. She is devoted to taking care of her sister, by taking the heat from her abusive dad. But she still maintains her sassy, badass attitude. She’s a good friend and the kind of person you can root for!

Lex and Abel-

What a couple of messed up kids. Lex felt extremely broken near the beginning and almost lost character development. It seems weird, but I felt like I understood her less. She almost lost personality and became Frankie’s personal shuttle service. Abel was kind of stupid. I liked the premise for his character but I didn’t understand why he had to lie the entire time about what was going on with him. Lex and Frankie would’ve understood and it seemed ridiculous that he would out right lie to them. Especially Lex, because they dated all summer. What the heck??

Love:

INSTA-LOVE to the max! Frankie and Marco have a total of maybe an hours worth of conversation before they’re both madly in love. And not much longer for Marco to say I love you. Seriously Frankie? She does stupid things for their love and she doesn’t even know him! High school is a more accurate time for insta-love, but it’s a crush, not a deep forever love that Frankie and Marco seem to have. Every moment they have had my eyes rolling. The author has to throw in a blurb about Noah too. Even though Frankie has supposedly been in love with Noah almost her entire life, she never really loved Noah like she loves Marco, which is why she can get over Noah so fast. Marco isn’t even that great. He’s the stereotypical bad boy and Frankie is the lost soul that brings him back to the light. So predictable!

Overall:

An okay book. If cliches don’t bother you and you don’t mind predictability, it’s a pretty unique read. Not many books take place in this setting so that was interesting. There is a lot of swearing because of the location, so if that’s something that bothers you, probably not a good choice. Want to try it for yourself? Grab it here. Let me know in the comments what you thought of it!

 

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